


heredity

by coffeesuperhero



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:37:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2828522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeesuperhero/pseuds/coffeesuperhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Barkour; based on the awesome prompt: <i>Things Ullr inherits from Sif, things he inherits from Loki, and things he makes for himself.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	heredity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Barkour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/gifts).



> _heredity (n.):_ the passing of traits from parents to their offspring.

From his mother he has his first word. It is _Asgard_ , and when it tumbles forth from his mouth, her answering smile bathes her son in a light that is warmer than the beams that stretch down from Yggdrasil. For the rest of his long life, Ullr will know the warmth of that smile, every time he gives a voice and a name to the place of his birth. 

_Asgard_. Enduring. Eternal. 

From his father he has his first weapons. They are daggers, small and sharp, and they fly through the air as silver birds of prey, borne on the wings of his magic. That too is from his father, but it is also his. 

The people of Asgard say that he is a reverse of what surely should have been, this strange child with his words from a warrior and his weapons from a wordsmith. But to Ullr, the way things are is the way they should be, for at this young age, Ullr likes things he can grasp. His father's words are curious and slippery; he cannot hold them like his mother's. His mother's weapons are unwieldy, onerous; his father's are light and loose in his hands, easily held and easily discarded. 

From his father he has sight, not of the world, but of possibilities, the complex web of intricate potentialities that stretches and bends and shapes the multiverse in all its infinite beauty. From his mother he has the courage to discover them. 

From mother and father both, he has love. It is a love that is wide and fierce, protective and all-encompassing. This is a love that rides to battle, a love that slays its foes, singing songs of war as it spirals ever outward from its locus into a universe that begins and ends with _home_ , with Asgard. 

This is a love for home, but it cannot be kept there. This love raises armies. This child will, too, in time. 

This is what his parents' love has wrought. Where it could have made war, a battle unending, each of them chasing the other through the cosmos for all eternity, it has instead made whole what was two halves, this child who is his own yet still the sum of their parts: Ullr, a study in contrasts; Ullr, dark-headed but bright-eyed; Ullr, with his heart at home in Asgard but his mind ever elsewhere, somewhere out in the blackness that separates the stars.

They say his voice comes from his father.

"If _your_ tongue is silver, your boy's is gold," Volstagg is fond of saying, usually just before slapping his father so hard between his shoulders that any reply Loki Silvertongue might have made dies a breathless death. It makes Loki wheeze; it makes Ullr laugh. 

When he is not with his family, he keeps to the mages' courts, learns their art and works to perfect it. Words of gold with an aural magic all their own win him the hearts of Asgard, from the oldest of the palace guards to the youngest, newest babe in the Healers Halls. Any lingering whispers about his heritage fade until they are a ghost that haunts only his father's ears. 

He makes friends. 

Delighted by his command of magic as much as his disposition, the other young ones trail constantly after him, a line of chattering children clattering up and down the glittering corridors of Gladsheim. This merry band of miscreants marches to every rhythm Ullr can think to play for them, and for good or for ill they follow him everywhere. 

It is mostly for good. Mostly. 

But it is from his father that he has his sense of fun, and of all the things he makes for himself, in his childhood it is mischief that he makes most often.

"Trouble follows him almost as much as his friends do," remarks his mother with increasing frequency as he grows older. 

"Not at all unlike another set of troublemakers that once roamed these halls," his grandmother answers, as his mother and father share a look that tells a thousand stories. 

"Where did you find him?" they inquire of Thor. 

"In the gardens," says his uncle, and though he no doubt intends to be stern, Ullr can see the corners of Thor's mouth twitching ever upward until his frown breaks like the dawn. The inevitable laughter is long and loud and so enthusiastic that even Loki, dour as usual in the presence of his brother, looks lighter of heart. 

"The mages report that they can thaw all of the trees he froze without his aid," Thor says, winking down at his nephew as he speaks, "so I am certain they will be calling upon you later to cajole him into reversing his spell." 

They do, of course. 

He grows older. In his youth he begins to long for adventure, all his abundant love for home at last giving way to waking wanderlust and boundless curiosity. He leaves the mages' courts behind, trading them for the dust of the training yards and the vaulted halls of Asgard's various libraries, where, variously, his father's weapons and his mother's words are put to better use than deviling the trees in the palace gardens for the delight of his young friends. 

The yards, once full mostly of men wielding spears and broadswords, now must make room for Ullr's magic, Ullr's quick footwork and quicker daggers. He has many victories, and Hogun tells him that he has not seen such spirit since Sif first stepped onto these grounds, heedless of all valedictions that women are not warriors. They have yet to learn their lesson, for magicians are not warriors, either, they say. 

"This one is," Ullr cheerfully replies, if anyone is bold enough to make this statement in his presence. 

Few are. That golden tongue still wins hearts, and where it does not, his father's daggers and his mother's tenacity win him bouts, if it does not win him minds. He wishes that it would. He wishes that _Asgard, enduring and eternal,_ were not also _Asgard, unyielding and unchanging_. He begs Thor for tales of other places, of Midgard, of Vanaheim, of worlds beyond the Realm Eternal, worlds that are less resistant to change.

"We are all still learning," Thor tells him, and with a furrowed brow that makes him look even more like his mother, Ullr queries, "And what exactly are we learning?" 

"Who we are," Thor says.

Unsatisfied, he seeks answers on his own. In the infinite halls of Asgard's many libraries, he pores over histories, topographies, mysteries, researching the magic that knits existence together. One world may be wide, but the myriad magnificence of the multiverse is incomprehensibly so, and though he cannot know it all even in his long lifetime, still he must seek to try, for determination bubbles in his veins as much as blood. All his spirit and all his tenacity will be evident in his face on the day that he gathers his weapons and his wits and goes to his parents to explain why he cannot stay at home, why he cannot leave the universe in all its untold wonders unexplored. 

"You have that of your mother," his father will say, lips twitching in their usual wry way. 

"You have that of your father," his mother will say, rolling her eyes in her usual exasperated way. 

"Perhaps I have it of myself," he will suggest, a hint of coldness in his speech they will not before have heard from their golden child with his mellifluous voice and his steadfast heart. But a common consequence of youth is a crisis of self, and with Ullr it will be no different. He tires of being seen only in pieces-- his father's voice, his mother's words. He feels strange and unbalanced, as though all these inherited traits are competing to take ownership of him, where once it was he who owned them. He has always known who he is, but here in the twilight of his youth he begins to wonder who he is not, and if that is the person he should have been instead. Once this place brought him warmth, but now it only brings questions, and with them, the chilling realization that he has no answers. It is a chill that will not thaw for many years to come.

The boy who was the golden child will become winter's youth, half his heart in Asgard and half in a realm far colder. 

In his quest for an identity separate from his parents', he will travel far and wide. His father's mistakes elude him, but he will make his own, far from the comforting light of home. The stars that keep watch over the frozen ground of Jotunheim are unfamiliar and strangely beautiful. He walks this snowy earth with careless footsteps, heedless of danger. He may be running from his inheritance, but he cannot escape his warriors training, and when the snow behind him crunches, instinct takes over. 

He makes trouble. 

He trades in his confusion over this fractionated life, exchanging it for the exhilaration of the long campaign, the good fight-- or even the bad fight, if the hour is late and his mood is sour and all his dark thoughts about his own identity overwhelm him. But even here on the very edges of the cosmos he cannot escape his inheritance, for it is his mother's voice he hears in these moments, saying, _When in doubt, fight_. And he does, using his father's daggers to do it. There are days when he fights to prove himself, days when he fights for the joy of it, and days when he fights because he cannot think of anything else that will shut out the rushing noise of the doubt that he carries. 

Comrades are made and comrades are lost, sometimes in the pursuit of knowledge, sometimes in the pursuit of glory, but they are always mourned and they will always be missed. 

He makes choices. He makes new friends. 

He masquerades as a mortal, traveling the universe with a ragtag band of compatriots in whose unexpected company he finds himself defending the galaxy from a series of villains. In their eyes and their deeds he sees what might have been, and thereafter when he lets loose his father's knives-- _his_ knives, now, he knows-- he does so with far more care. 

Finally, after all this time, he makes _good_. 

Years pass. Still home calls to him. From leagues and galaxies away, in the midst of battle or in the eerie calm before another bout, he will hear it. He is always a satellite of the Realm Eternal, no matter how wide his orbit, and on the day when that thought brings him joy once more, he gathers his friends, says his goodbyes, and sets a course for home. 

The seas surrounding the capital will be bright and blue-gold behind the Gatekeeper when Ullr returns to the place of his birth. 

"All right," he will say, stardust settling at his feet, "I'm home." 

He walks back to Gladsheim, forsaking the horses he knows they would bring him. He has been too long away from home, and he would see every brick, greet every citizen. They have fought wars in the years since he went off to wage war on himself, but even so most everything he finds as it was when he left. Asgard. Enduring. Eternal. 

In his chambers there are gifts, left behind by his parents, who he is to understand from palace chatter have gone off on some new adventure. 

His mother has left him a shield. It is one of her own, and he knows it well, for it is the shield she used when she trained him to use a sword. When he picks it up, curling it up to his chest, words the color of his mother's armour spill out across his field of vision. 

_For Asgard_ , the note says, in Sif's decisive script. _Keep her safe in our absence, and yourself along with her._

His father has left him a spellbook. He scans it before he hefts it up into one hand and is glad of it, for the curse Loki has placed upon it would have made for a very unpleasant homecoming. Loki, too, has left him a word or two.

 _For whatever useful purpose you can devise_ , reads Loki's languid lettering. There is a pause before the words continue their journey through the air, and he can feel rather than see his father's sardonic smile. _Or unuseful. The decision is yours._

He smiles, considering those words. The decision has always been his; no one else could write the story of his life. With the shield in one hand and spellbook in the other, both at last of equal measure in weight and in his heart, he feels whole again.

For his parents, he makes time, for Asgard and for the magic that binds her together.

For himself, he makes peace.


End file.
